“MY MOM DOESN’T BAKE”

Before getting started with this baking thing, let me tell you there is one new item added to my “what I miss in Cape Town” list: Woolies Chocolate Cupcakes. They’ve saved me not once or twice but dozens of times.

Our class will be hosting a language café for the school on the 26.9. which is the European Day of Languages. Please think about what foods you could prepare to sell, international baked goods are very welcome and would suit our theme perfectly. Any money raised will be going towards future field trips and fun things for the class.

Well. I don’t bake. Not. At. All. Ever. The only thing I can bake is blueberry pie. Subject to availability of pre-prepared frozen base. And blueberries costing less than gold. Finland.

Kind as Talky is, he suggested that’s what we’ll bake. Fair enough. To overcome a slight logistical challenge, Talky needing to take the pie by bus to school, I came up with an idea of using small cupcake cups instead of one large dish. It didn’t end too well. The outcome was, as South Africans would politely say, interesting. Just take a look at the top image.

After “mom they look kinda funny” discussion we had another discussion about sales (it DOES matter how things look like) and yet another discussion about the importance of having plan B.

In this case plan B was to make another visit to a nearby supermarket, buying a few packs of frozen sweet rolls aka pulla, and “bake” them in the oven. However, later in the evening I started to feel a bit embarrassed, went back to the supermarket, bought another set of ingredients for a blueberry pie, and baked a large one closer to midnight.

In total, this café ended up costing me about 30 € (R450) and 4 hours. The money raised will be used for a Rush visit, 26 € (R330). I get it that in an ideal world, in an ideal family, baking would be a fun family thing to do together. In a less ideal world, I’d much rather just pay the entrance fee.

This experiment was also an introduction to an old new dietary culture. Whereas in Cape Town nobody had any allergies or other food related handicaps (maybe there were but people just didn’t make a fuss about it), here in Finland everything needs to be lactose, gluten and sugar free. I think this topic will be discussed in more detail later, but for now we learnt how to say “lactose free” 🙂